Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein blocks President Trump’s bid to take over hush-money case from New York court

A federal judge on Friday denied another bid by President Donald Trump to put the hush-money conviction case under federal control, continuing a procedural fight over where the post-conviction process should play out. The request was heard by U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, who blocked Trump from having the U.S. District Court in Manhattan seize control of the case from the New York court where Trump was tried and convicted, according to PBS NewsHour Politics.

PBS NewsHour Politics reported that the ruling was the third time Judge Hellerstein has prevented Trump from re-routing the case to federal court. The decision keeps the matter tied to the state court proceedings connected to Trump’s Manhattan criminal conviction rather than moving it wholesale into federal jurisdiction at this stage.

Trump’s latest effort aimed to erase the underlying conviction, but the judge’s order did not alter the basic locus of the case at the time of the decision. By denying the request to transfer control, Hellerstein preserved the procedural posture in which state-court avenues and federal review, if any, would proceed through the established sequence rather than through an immediate federal takeover.

The fight has focused on how post-conviction challenges should be handled and which court system has authority to oversee particular steps after a conviction in Manhattan. Judge Hellerstein’s repeated denials indicate that, in his view, Trump has not met the threshold required for the kind of intervention Trump sought, at least as presented in these motions.

The practical effect of the ruling is to delay any immediate shift to federal supervision of the case’s post-trial steps. For Trump, that means continued reliance on the state-court process where the conviction was obtained, while federal involvement, if pursued, would follow whatever legal pathway remains available after the state proceedings.

For the courts and litigants involved, the decision also reinforces the division of responsibility between the state system that conducted the trial and conviction and the federal system that typically becomes involved only under specified statutory and constitutional rules. The recurring federal denials suggest that procedural gateways such as jurisdiction, timing, and the scope of any permissible relief remain central to how Trump’s arguments can be litigated.

The next steps depend on how the parties proceed in the state court system and whether Trump files further motions raising similar or revised jurisdictional theories in federal court. Additional filings would likely address the same question that drove Hellerstein’s prior rulings: whether the federal district court can take over control of the case at the requested stage.